


Out of the Mouths of Babes

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Durin Family, Gen, Kink Meme, bb!dorf addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 09:45:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for the kink meme: "Dis's husband died before Kili's birth. Several years later while playing outside, one of the kids says something about his/her daddy and perplexed Kili asks what is this 'daddy'. Children have some kind of brainstorm and shower Kili with explanations. Kili soaks all those informations and comes to conclusion that uncle Thorin is his dad."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Mouths of Babes

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own anything, I am making no profit from this story. I transplanted Thyra from my story Durin's Day Eve so I wouldn't have to think too hard to come up with little playmates for Fíli and Kíli. I imagine the boys are (mentally) about five and six (five years apart isn't as much of a gap to Dwarves as it is to Men). I think Dís probably would have talked more about their dad to the boys growing up than she does here, but let's suspend our disbelief and assume she didn't get around to it as much as she would have liked.
> 
> Read the original prompt and fill here: http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/4373.html?thread=8703765#t8703765

Fíli, son of Víli, husband of Dís, daughter of Thráin, son of Thrór, old King Under the Mountain was the first child of Erebor to be born in the Blue Mountains. Dwarves thought all children a blessing, there was much rejoicing and well-wishing to the young couple, well wishes for the bonny babe. If he had been born in their ancient halls, gifts of jewels and precious metals would have been presented to his proud parents, toasts would have been made in the mead halls when their king declared the blue-eyed, blonde-haired infant and sister-son his heir. Instead, the visitors brought gifts of bread and meat, casks of honey mead for the blessings and carved wooden toys. His parents accepted all of this graciously and sincerely; it was the best their exiled, impoverished friends and kinfolk could do.  
  
If the celebration surrounding the child’s birth were a bit bittersweet, no one marked them. Fíli was more than an heir in name to a lost throne, like every child born in exile he was a symbol of hope. Their home may have been ravaged, their wealth stolen and their land abandoned, but they remained and someday, some glorious day, they would retake all that was rightfully theirs.  
  
The lad’s father, a lifelong resident of the Ered Luin, thought little of that. In fact, he seemed more bemused than anything at the great fuss that was roused when it was declared that Thorin, King Under the Mountain claimed the princess’s son as an heir. As Víli saw it, Dís had a son and his brother-in-law had a nephew and that was reason enough for rejoicing, king and princess or no. Víli was a good-natured, honest soul who treated everyone with courtesy, from the mightiest king to the most foolish beggar. One could never tell the future, he pointed out. Best to enjoy what you had rather than make yourself miserable, mad or both dreaming of what-could-bes.  
  
It was a simple wisdom that some of the most ancient of the line of Durin never achieved. It made him happy. Maybe he was wise beyond his years because he was destined to live a very short while.  
  
A cave-in at the mine where he worked was the cause of his premature demise. There was no accounting for the random shifting of the earth, it was no one’s fault and that made it all the harder to bear. Everyone hoped it was a quick end and painless, but Dwarves are a hardy race and he likely suffered. No one said as much to his wife, who was carrying his second child. Not for fear of upsetting her, but because it was pointless to inform someone of what they already knew.  
  
Kíli was born to a house beset by mourning. He had his mother’s dark hair and his father’s dark eyes. The visitors came again, bringing food and drink and trinkets for the lad, but it was his mother and her brother who thanked them, though the lass could rarely be prevailed upon to smile at their generosity. None took offense, she’d lost so much already, a home, parents, a brother, friends and kin on the road and now a widow before her ninetieth birthday. It was a marvel she was not so bowed down by grief that she could not stand.  
  
Time passed, as ever it will. Early on, Fíli would wake at night, crying and asking for Da, but he did so less and less as the months wore on and soon he said nothing more about him. Kíli, who never knew his father, naturally, did not ask after him and it was a subject that was so infrequently broached by visitors in the hearing of the children that it simply never occurred to him that anything in his life was missing.

He had his mother and his brother, his uncle and the various ‘Misters’ who came through their house with such regularity that he knew who was at the door by the sound of their knocking or the tread of their boots. Mister Dwalin was a regular fixture, as was Mister Balin who was beginning to teach Fíli his letters. Misters Bofur and Bifur would come with their toys and play games with them and make his mother laugh. Mister Bombur and Missus Thyra would come, bringing with them other children to romp with. Mister Dori eventually brought Ori, but Ori was not a Mister, being even younger than Kíli himself. Mister Gloin came with Missus Hervor and she would sit him on her lap and let him tangle his hands in her soft beard, pulling her red, carefully tended to plaits out. With so many about who loved him, what more could a little dwarf want?  
  
One afternoon, Mister Balin let them out of their lessons early (well, Fíli had lessons, Kíli would lay on the floor and stage mock-sieges with little warrior figurines and wooden blocks) and they had time yet before their mother and uncle would come and collect them. With boundless energy and more enthusiasm than skill, they ran to the grassy knoll in back of the shops and played at fighting with wooden swords, Fíli very generously letting Kíli stab him to death since his brother could get awfully cross when he lost.  
  
“Take that!” Kíli cried, his high, childish voice ringing out in the hustle and bustle of the afternoon. “And that!” He struck Fíli under his arm and his brother moaned and groaned dramatically. “And THAT!” Kíli poked his brother in the stomach and Fíli let out a death-screech that was so realistic, Missus Thyra came running from the bake shop.  
  
“Killing your brother again, Kíli?” she asked, smiling as her two children, Bilfur and Catla came bounding up behind her.  
  
“We want to kill him too!” Bilfur shouted.  
  
“Please, please, _please_ Ma, can we kill him?” Catla asked, bouncing up and down excitedly.  
  
Thyra put her hands on her hips and tilted her head down at her daughter. “ _Excuse_ me, miss?”  
  
“Sorry Ma,” Catla said, scuffing her toe in the dirt. “ _May_ we kill him?”  
  
“If Master Fíli will let himself be killed, that’s his affair,” the baker said good-naturedly.  
  
“I don’t mind,” Fíli said, sitting up and making a miraculous recovery from his fatal wounds. “Dying’s fun when it’s only pretend. ‘Cos you get to scream the loudest when you die.”  
  
“I could scream louder than you,” Kíli insisted.  
  
“Can - _May_ I kill you, then?” Catla asked eagerly. “So you get to scream the loudest.”  
  
Bilfur seemed unimpressed by the assertion. “That’s rubbish. Everyone knows _I_ scream the loudest, Ma says if I screamed any louder I’d break the windows.”  
  
“Well, I’ll kill you then, and we’ll see,” Fíli said, getting to his feet and raising his swords. “Want to play Orcs and Dwarves? Or Dwarves and Trolls?”  
  
“Trolls! Trolls! Trolls!”  
  
Seeing that the children were safely engrossed in their war games Thyra went back to her ovens after reminding them to stick close to the shops and not wander off. They nodded and promptly forgot all about her as Kílli climbed onto Bilfur’s back so they could more convincingly resemble a massive mountain troll.  
  
“I’M GONNA EAT YOU!” the two lads bellowed as one and the sound was indeed deafening. It wasn’t long before several of the village children, called by the siren song of mayhem, joined in the game and the grass was covered with the writhing bodies of dwarflings screaming so loudly, a passerby could be forgiven for imaging a real slaughter was taking place.  
  
After they exhausted themselves and screamed their lungs out near to bursting, Bilfur took it upon himself to make friends and influence people by using his connections at the bake shop to procure some rolls for them to munch on. Fíli offered to go with him to help carry them (and sneak an extra, if he could) and together they set off for the shops. Half a dozen sweaty, tired little dwarflings flopped down on the grass. One of the older of the group, a builder’s son by the name of Reginn, began boasting of his father’s accomplishments.

“Me Da slew _hundreds_ of Goblins at Moria,” he proclaimed. “It’s why I’ll to be the strongest and best warrior in the land, s’in me blood.”  
  
“No he didn’t,” a tiny voice, quiet as a mouse piped up. Reginn sat up, glaring to see who challenged him, but his furrowed eyebrows lifted when he saw it was little Ori, who wouldn’t say boo to a blackbird under ordinary circumstances.  
  
“What, are you saying Da’s a liar?” he asked, a frown bisecting his round face.  
  
Ori shook his head, nervous at suddenly being the center of attention. “N-no. It...it’s just...”  
  
“Just what?”  
  
“Justthatgoblinsdon’tcomeoutduringthedayandthefightatMoriawasduringthedayanditwasn’tgoblinsitwasorcs.”

  
Reginn didn’t quite understand. “Eh?”

“It was Orcs, not Goblins,” Kíli translated for his friend. “ _Everybody_ knows that.”

“So he _is_ calling me da a liar!” Reginn shouted, making to rise up and spring for little Ori who was scrambling away on his knees to hide behind Kíli.

“Lay off him,” Catla said, shoving Reginn back down on the grass. “He’s only little and who cares about your stupid old Da?”

Reginn looked between Catla and Ori, obviously trying to figure out if there would be enough left of him to actually punch the younger boy by the time he got through her. Deciding that it wasn’t worth the risk, Reginn sat down in a huff and, with the calculated cruelty of a child said, “He don’t even _have_ a Da anyway, so what does he know?”

Ori’s little face fell and Catla clobbered Reginn and said, “That’s not fair, you’re just sore ‘cos you’re wrong about goblins!”

Kíli, for his part, could not understand what all the fuss was about. “What’s a Da?” he asked, his face a perfect mask of confusion. It was actually a question that had been on his mind a lot, recently. He knew what a ‘Ma’ was, he had one of those and his mates all had dwarrow men in their lives they called ‘Da,’ but he wasn’t sure why one of those male dwarves got singled out as ‘Da.’

“You don’t know what a Da is?” Reginn laughed. “You’re stupid. Don’t you have one neither?”

“He’s not so stupid as you,” Fryr, the jeweler’s son, retorted. “You can’t tell the difference 'tween Orcs and Goblins.”

“Well, what’s a Da?” Kíli asked, glaring at Reginn, who he didn’t much like anyway. “Tell me, if you knows everything ‘bout everything.”

Reginn opened his mouth, convinced that he was going to come up with the most brilliant account of Da-ness this side of the Misty Mountains, but he found himself at a loss as far as a description was concerned. “A Da,” he began, the faltered. “Well...a Da...fights in battles.”

Kíli mulled this information over in his mind. If that was the only criteria, he had a _lot_ of Das. Misters Dwalin, Balin, Glóin, Óin and Bifur all fought in battle, not to mention his Uncle Thorin who was the bravest of them all and took on the terrifying Pale Orc with an oaken branch.

“Not always!” Catla protested. “Me Da’s never been in battle, but he’s a Da all the same.”

“Well, you tell him what a Da is, you’re so clever.”

Catla paused a moment to consider this information and said, “Das kiss you good morning and kiss you goodnight and tell you stories and sing to you and eat the most of everyone in the house.”

This new influx of information caused Kíli to re-evaluate the number of Das he could claim. Served in battle, kissed you and sang for you and told stories and ate a lot...well, Mister Dwalin was still in the running and Uncle Thorin would somes swap foods he didn’t like for foods he did, so Kíli supposed that counted.

“Das teach you things,” Fryr added. “‘Bout fighting and letters and...things. And they play games with you and braid your hair and look after you when you’re ill or hurt.”

Uncle Thorin and Mister Dwalin did all those things. When he fell from a tree only a few weeks ago and bumped his head so hard it swelled up like there was a big purple egg under his skin, Uncle Thorin came running at the sound of Fíli’s screams and picked up up and carried him in and Mister Dwalin called Mister Óin who gave him something that made him sleepy. When he woke up in darkness, sick to his stomach, Uncle Thorin carried him into the sitting room and sang him songs until he went back to sleep.

 “Das live with Mas,” Reginn added smugly, as though that was the final word on the subject. “And sometimes Mas get cross with ‘em and gives ‘em what-for.”

That meant Mister Dwalin was out. He lived with Mister Balin down the road, but Uncle Thorin lived with Mam. He had one room all to himself, but he was there in the morning when Kíli woke up and there for supper and he spent all day with Mam in the forge. Mam and Uncle Thorin were brother and sister like how he was brothers with Fíli and she would spar with him and Mister Dwalin in the evenings and he and his brother would watch and sometimes she bested them, which must count as giving ‘what-for.’

Yes, when he reflected on it, Mam gave Uncle what-for all the time. Just last night when Uncle Thorin traded his potatoes for Kíli’s beets, she’d cuffed him right on the back of the head, but she was laughing and Uncle laughed as well, so in the case of his family, Mas didn’t have to be cross to give Das what-for.

“I have a Da,” Kíli said defiantly. Taking stock of Ori still peeping out from behind him, Kíli put an arm around his younger friend’s shoulder and said, “Ori’s got a Da too, Mister Dori’s Ori’s Da.”

“Mister Dori’s his _brother_ ,” Reginn sneered derisively. “Brothers can’t be Das.”

“Why not?” Kíli asked. Turning to Ori, he questioned him. “Does Mister Dori play with you and sing and kiss you and teach you and tuck you in nights and patch you up when you fall and eat food and live with your Ma?”

Silently, Ori nodded his agreement that his brother did all of those things. “See?” Kíli smiled triumphantly, pleased the matter was settled. “Ori’s got a Da and I got a Da and if I got a Da, Fíli’s got a Da, so hush your mouth about it.”

At that moment, Fíli and Bilfur returned with rolls and the children ate happily, spending the rest of the afternoon playing until the sun began to dip down behind the mountaintops and they had to head for home. The other dwarflings forgot the matter of Das as soon as it was dropped, but it remained on Kíli’s mind for the rest of the day. As he walked along to the forge with his brother, he wondered that Fíli never told him these rules about Das. Did his brother not know about them?

Kíli was pleased as punch to be privy to information his brother did not have, so he said nothing about it the whole way. He only hoped his Uncle Thorin was not angry with him for not using the title he so richly deserved. But if no one told him the secret about who one’s Da was, how was he supposed to know? No mattered, he’d put it all to rights when he saw him.

Dís was lowering the wooden awning to close their stall when she saw her sons gamboling up the road toward them. “Hallo, my lovelies!” she waved and grinned at them. Her sons grinned back and ran for her, eager for the sooty hugs she gave at the end of a day’s work. Fíli’s legs being slightly longer, he reached her first, hurtling himself into her waiting arms.

Kíli was slightly perturbed that his brother beat him to her, but he spied Uncle Thorin emerging from the shadows by the recently-doused fire, hands and face dripping with the water he used to clean off. Excited to demonstrate his new found knowledge, Kíli raced for his uncle, crying, “Da!” as he leapt into his embrace.

Dís’s smile evaporated instantly and she and Thorin exchanged a startled look over the heads of the children in their arms. Fíli too looked at his brother curiously, snuggled as he was with his arms around his uncle’s neck, head tucked against his chest. Silently, the siblings agreed not to comment on this strange aberration in Kíli’s behavior.

That would have been the end of it, if the youngest member of the line of Durin did not persist in using the appellation all through dinner. And after dinner. And when Dís went to braid his hair for bed, he batted her hands away and said he wanted his Da to do it.

“He’s not our Da, cabbagehead,” Fíli said finally putting an end to the nonsense. “He’s our _uncle_.”

“Shows what all _you_ know,” Kíli replied, sticking his tongue out and settling himself in Thorin’s lap. “Reginn said Ori and me didn’t have no Das and I said, what’s a Da and everyone said it’s a dwarf who takes care of you and lives with your Ma. And eats a lot. And I said I did so have a Da and he’s my Uncle.”

Behind him, Thorin let out a gusty sigh and tried to settle the matter. “Kíli, lad,” he began, but his sister crossed the room and held her arms out for her youngest son.

“Reginn has nothing but rust and sawdust between his ears and you must never believe a word he says,” Dís informed him bluntly. “Come with me, my love and I’ll tell you all about Das.”

Kíli lifted his arms obligingly and Dís took him into her room and shut the door behind them. “Now, my little amber-eyed darling,” she began and her youngest puffed up a bit since his mother only called him her ‘amber-eyed darling’ when she was very pleased with his behavior, “I’m afraid you’re a bit off about your uncle.”

Her dark-haired child shook his head defiantly. “No, no, Mam,” he patted her arm gently, to lessen the sting of being corrected. “I know he’s my Da, he acts just as a Da ought.”

Dís smiled, but the expression did not quite reach her eyes. “Aye, that’s true enough. But acting like a Da isn’t the same as _being_ a Da. Your uncle loves you with all his heart.”

“More than the stars and the moon?” Kíli asked, loving this game.

“Oh, aye,” his mother nodded, reaching over to her bedside table to fetch a comb to work the worst of the snarls out of her son’s hair. “More than the stars and the moon and the jewels of the earth - ”

“And the snows of the mountains.”

“And the snows of the mountains and the light of the sun,” she finished. “He loves you and Fíli _that_ much...but you had a Da too. And he loved you that much.”

Kíli considered her statement for a moment, then looked up at his mother doubtfully. “I don’t remember him,” he replied.

Dís wrapped her arms around him and kissed him on the head. “I know you don’t, love. And I should have talked more about him, so you’d know him, even if you don’t remember him. But he loved you, know that first of all.”

“Did he love you too? And Fíli?”

Laughing, his mother pulled back and continued smoothing his hair. “Oh, aye, he loved the whole lot of us. And Bofur and Bifur and...everyone. He had the biggest heart in all the world and the nicest smile.”

Her son twisted to look at her and frowned, “You say I have the nicest smile.”

“You have,” she replied, bopping him lightly on the nose with the comb. “You’ve got his smile. You and your brother both got that from him. He had golden hair, just as Fíli has.”

“What was his name? All the other Das got names, like Mister Bombur and Mister Glóin.”

“And so he had a name,” she paused and her next word was more like a sigh than natural speech. “Víli.”

Her son’s face lit up. “Like Fíli and Kíli?” he asked excitedly.

“Just like, you clever thing,” she said.

“How come I don’t know him?” he asked curiously.

Dís exhaled, unsure how to proceed in a way her son will understand. “Well...he’s with your grandmother and grandfather and great-grandfather and all our forebears. He passed on before you were born.”

“Did he fall in battle?” Kíli asked. “How many Orcs did he kill?”

Tying off the end of a braid, his mother stifled a sigh and replied, “He didn’t kill a single Orc, my love. He did not fall in battle...it was an accident. Sometimes, for no reason at all, people pass away long before their time. It isn’t right or fair, but it happens.”

“Oh,” Kíli said, trying to turn this information over and absorb it all. “That’s sad.”

What more could be said? “It is,” Dís nodded, drawing her son close to her again.

Kíli tilted his head back to look at his mother wonderingly. “Are you sad?”

“Sometimes,” she admitted. “But I try not to be because your Da was always so happy and he’d want me to be happy. And I’ve still got plenty to be happy about. I’ve got you and your brother and your Uncle Thorin and all our kin and friends here in the Blue Mountains. And that’s enough to be going on with.”

Later that night, Kíli tip-toed out of his bedroom after his mother and uncle bade him good-night, kissed him and did all those things he’d been told were the responsibility of fathers. Thorin was still awake, smoking his pipe before the guttering fire, but he turned at the sound of bare feet on the floor. “What is it?” he asked, crossing the room to kneel before his nephew. “Bad dream?”

Kíli did not say anything, but he wrapped his arms around his uncle’s neck, burying his face in his long hair that smelled of clean sweat and soot and smoke and _home_ and the dwarfling whispered, “I don’t care if I don’t got a Da. You’re better than all the Das in the world, you and Mam are. I love you, uncle.”

Thorin held his nephew in turn, rising to his feet with the boy in his arms and carrying him back to his bed. “I love you too,” Thorin said, kissing the lad gently on the temple. “And thank you. But let’s get you back in bed before you’re Mam realizes you’re out of it or she’ll have both our heads.”

Kíli pulled back, grinning. “She’ll give you what-for!” he replied in a whisper so loud it might have disturbed the neighbors.

“Indeed she will,” Thorin agreed. He lay his younger sister-son down and tucked the blankets under his chin. He passed a hand over Kili’s soft dark hair and traced the downy scruff along his cheek fondly. Before he left, he kissed Fíli as well, who burrowed down in his blankets and muttered something unintelligible, a smile on his lips.

Not for the first time, he wished his brother-in-law could see what fine lads his sons were turning out to be. Víli was and would have been an excellent father and Thorin often thought he was a poor substitute. He was not as patient as he could be, nor as demonstrative and affectionate. He did love deeply, however, and he was sure he adored those lads as much as Víli could.

No, he was not their father, he reflected as he closed the bedroom door gently. But those children would never grow up believing they were unloved for a single moment. If he could promise them nothing else, he would promise them that.


End file.
